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THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. 

Edited, with an Introduction, by William James. 
With Portrait. Crown 8vo, $2.00. 
HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two Supposed Objec- 
tions to the Doctrine. i6mo, $1.00. t . 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols. 

8vo. New York ; Henry Holt & Co. 1890. 
PSYCHOLOGY. Briefer Course. i2mo. New York: 

Henry Holt & Co. 1892. 
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? i8mo. Philadelphia: 

S. B. Weston, 1305 Arch St. 1896. 
THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS 

IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. New York: 

Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 



TWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS 
TO THE DOCTRINE 

BY 

WILLIAM JAMES 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND 
INGERSOLL LECTURER FOR 1898 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK* 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIIsT AND COMPANY 

1898 



15068 



COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY WILLIAM JAMES 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



W 5- 1898 



of Co^ 



TWO COPIES RCCEIVED- 



THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 



Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, 
who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New 
Hampshire, Jan, 2b, i8gj. 

First. In carrying out the wishes of my late 
beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam- 
bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, 
and which he always held in love and honor, the 
sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for 
the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some- 
what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is 
— one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con- 
venient day between the last day of May and the 
first day of December, on this subject, "the Im- 
mortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part 
of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by 
any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine 
of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor 
may be appointed to such service. The choice of 
said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious 
denomination, nor to any one profession, but may 
be that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint- 
ment to take place at least six months before the 
delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be 
safely invested and three fourths of the annual in- 
terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his 
services and the remaining fourth to be expended 
in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of 
the lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur- 
nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same 
lecture to be named and known as " the Ingersoll 
lecture on the Immortality of Man." 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 



T is a matter unfortunately too 
often seen in history to call for 
much remark, that when a living 
want of mankind has got itself officially 
protected and organized in an institution, 
one of the things which the institution 
most surely tends to do is to stand in the 
way of the natural gratification of the want 
itself. We see this in laws and courts 
of justice; we see it in ecclesiasticisms ; 
we see it in academies of the fine arts, in 
the medical and other professions, and we 
even see it in the universities themselves. 

Too often do the place-holders of such 
institutions frustrate the spiritual purpose 
to which they were appointed to minister, 
by the technical light which soon becomes 




2 Human Immortality 

the only light in which they seem able to 
see the purpose, and the narrow way which 
is the only way in which they can work in 
its service. 

I confess that I thought of this for a 
moment when the Corporation of our Uni- 
versity invited me last spring to give this 
Ingersoll lecture. Immortality is one of 
the great spiritual needs of man. The 
churches have constituted themselves the 
official guardians of the need, with the re- 
sult that some of them actually pretend to 
accord or to withhold it from the individ- 
ual by their conventional sacraments, — 
withhold it at least in the only shape in 
which it can be an object of desire. And 
now comes the Ingersoll lectureship. Its 
high-minded founder evidently thought that 
our University might serve the cause he 
had at heart more liberally than the 
churches do, because a university is a body 
so much less trammeled by traditions and 
by impossibilities in regard to choice of 
persons. And yet one of the first things 



Human Immortality j 

which the university does is to appoint a 
man like him who stands before you, cer- 
tainly not because he is known as an en- 
thusiastic messenger of the future life, 
burning to publish the good tidings to his 
fellow-men, but apparently because he is 
a university official. 

Thinking in this way, I felt at first as if 
I ought to decline the appointment. The 
whole subject of immortal life has its prime 
roots in personal feeling. I have to con-" 
fess that my own personal feeling about 
immortality has never been of the keenest 
order, and that, among the problems that 
give my mind solicitude, this one does not 
take the very foremost place. Yet there 
are individuals with a real passion for the 
matter, men and women for whom a life 
hereafter is a pungent craving, and the 
thought of it an obsession ; and in whom 
keenness of interest has bred an insight 
into the relations of the subject that no one 
less penetrated with the mystery of it can 
attain. Some of these people are known 



4 Human Immortality 

to me. They are not official personages ; 
they do not speak as the scribes, but as 
having direct authority. And surely, if 
anywhere a prophet clad in goatskins, and 
not a uniformed official, should be called to 
give inspiration, assurance, and instruction, 
it would seem to be here, on such a theme. 
Office, at any rate, ought not to displace 
spiritual calling. 

And yet, in spite of these reflections, 
which I could not avoid making, I am 
here to-night, all uninspired and official as 
I am. I am sure that prophets clad in 
goatskins, or, to speak less figuratively, lay- 
men inspired with emotional messages on 
the subject, will often enough be invited 
by our Corporation to give the Ingersoll 
lecture hereafter. Meanwhile, all negative 
and deadening as the remarks of a mere 
professional psychologist like myself may 
be in comparison with the vital lessons they 
will give, I am sure, upon mature reflec- 
tion, that those who have the responsibility 
of administering the Ingersoll foundation 



Human Immortality 5 

are in duty bound to let the most various 
kinds of official personages take their turn 
as well. The subject is really an enor- 
mous subject. At the back of Mr. Alger's 
' Critical History of the Doctrine of a Fu- 
ture Life/ there is a bibliography of more 
than five thousand titles of books in which 
it is treated. Our Corporation cannot think 
only of the single lecture : it must think 
of the whole series of lectures in futuro. 
Single lectures, however emotionally in- 
spired and inspiring they may be, will not 
be enough. The lectures must remedy 
each other, so that out of the series there 
shall emerge a collective literature worthy 
of the importance of the theme. This 
unquestionably was what the founder had 
in mind. He wished the subject to be 
turned over in all possible aspects, so 
that at last results might ponderate har- 
moniously in the true direction. Seen in 
this long perspective, the Ingersoll foun- 
dation calls for nothing so much as for 
minute division of labor. Orators must 



6 Human Immortality 

take their turn, and prophets ; but narrow 
specialists as well. Theologians of every 
creed, metaphysicians, anthropologists, and 
psychologists must alternate with biologists 
and physicists and psychical researchers, — 
even with mathematicians. If any one of 
them presents a grain of truth, seen from 
his point of view, that will remain and 
accrete with truths brought by the others, 
his will have been a good appointment. 

In the hour that lies before us, then, I 
shall seek to justify my appointment by 
offering what seem to me two such grains 
of truth, two points well fitted, if I am not 
mistaken, to combine with anything that 
other lecturers may bring. 

These points are both of them in the 
nature of replies to objections, to difficul- 
ties which our modern culture finds in the 
old notion of a life hereafter, — difficulties 
that I am sure rob the notion of much of 
its old power to draw belief, in the scien- 
tifically cultivated circles to which this 
audience belong. 



Human Immortality y 

The first of these difficulties is relative 
to the absolute dependence of our spiritual / 
life, as we know it here, upon the brain. 
One hears not only physiologists, but num- 
bers of laymen who read the popular sci- 
ence books and magazines, saying all about 
us, How can we believe in life hereafter 
when Science has once for all attained to 
proving, beyond possibility of escape, that 
our inner life is a function of that fa- 
mous material, the so-called 'gray mat- 
ter ' of our cerebral convolutions ? How 
can the function possibly persist after its 
organ has undergone decay ? 

Thus physiological psychology is what 
is supposed to bar the way to the old 
faith. And it is now as a physiological 
psychologist that I ask you to look at the 
question with me a little more closely. 

It is indeed true that physiological sci- 
ence has come to the conclusion cited ; 
and we must confess that in so doing she 
has only carried out a little farther the 
common belief of mankind. Every one 



8 Human Immortality 

knows that arrests of brain development 
occasion imbecility, that blows on the 
head abolish memory or consciousness, and 
that brain-stimulants and poisons change 
the quality of our ideas. The anatomists, 
physiologists, and pathologists have only 
shown this generally admitted fact of a 
dependence to be detailed and minute. 
What the laboratories and hospitals have 
lately been teaching us is not only that 
thought in general is one of the brain's 
functions, but that the various special 
forms of thinking are functions of special 
portions of the brain. When we are think- 
ing of things seen, it is our occipital convo- 
lutions that are active ; when of things 
heard, it is a certain portion of our tem- 
poral lobes ; when of things to be spoken, 
it is one of our frontal convolutions. Pro- 
fessor Flechsig of Leipzig (who perhaps 
more than any one may claim to have 
made the subject his own) considers that 
in other special convolutions those pro- 
cesses of association go on, which permit 



Human Immortality g 

the more abstract processes of thought, to 
take place. I could easily show you these 
regions if I had here a picture of the 
brain. 1 Moreover, the diminished or exag- 
gerated associations of what this author 
calls the KorperfUhlsphdre with the other 
regions, accounts, according to him, for 
the complexion of our emotional life, and 
eventually decides whether one shall be a 
callous brute or criminal, an unbalanced 
sentimentalist, or a character accessible to 
feeling, and yet well poised. Such special 
opinions may have to be corrected ; yet so 
firmly established do the main positions 
worked out by the anatomists, physiolo- 
gists, and pathologists of the brain appear, 
that the youth of our medical schools are 
everywhere taught unhesitatingly to be- 
lieve them. The assurance that observa- 
tion will go on to establish them ever more 
and more minutely is the inspirer of all 
contemporary research. And almost any 
of our young psychologists will tell you 
that only a few belated scholastics, or pos- 



io Human Immortality 

sibly some crack-brained theosophist or 
psychical researcher, can be found hold- 
ing back, and still talking as if mental 
phenomena might exist as independent 
variables in the world. 

For the purposes of my argument, now, 
I wish to adopt this general doctrine as 
if it were established absolutely, with no 
possibility of restriction. During this hour 
I wish you also to accept it as a postulate, 
whether you think it incontrovertibly es- 
tablished or not ; so I beg you to agree 
with me to-day in subscribing to the great 
psycho-physiological formula : Thought is 
a function of the brain. 

The question is, then, Does this doctrine 
logically compel us to disbelieve in immor- 
tality ? Ought it to force every truly con- 
sistent thinker to sacrifice his hopes of an 
hereafter to what he takes to be his duty 
of accepting all the consequences of a sci- 
entific truth ? 

Most persons imbued with what one may 
call the puritanism of science would feel 



Human Immortality u 

themselves bound to answer this question 
with a yes. If any medically or psycho- 
logically bred young scientists feel other- 
wise, it is probably in consequence of that 
incoherency of mind of which the majority 
of mankind happily enjoy the privilege. 
At one hour scientists, at another they are 
Christians or common men, with the will to 
live burning hot in their breasts ; and, hold- 
ing thus the two ends of the chain, they 
are careless of the intermediate connection. 
But the more radical and uncompromising 
disciple of science makes the sacrifice, and, 
sorrowfully or not, according to his tem- 
perament, submits to giving up his hopes 
of heaven. 2 

This, then, is the objection to immortal- 
ity; and the next thing in order for me 
is to try to make plain to you why I be- 
lieve that it Jias in strict logic no deter- 
rent power. I must show you that the fatal 
consequence is not coercive, as is com- 
monly imagined ; and that, even though our 
soul's life (as here below it is revealed to 



12 Human Immortality 

us) may be in literal strictness the function 
of a brain that perishes, yet it is not at all 
impossible, but on the contrary quite pos- 
sible, that the life may still continue when 
the brain itself is dead. 

The supposed impossibility of its contin- 
uing comes from too superficial a look at 
the admitted fact of functional dependence. 
The moment we inquire more closely into 
the notion of functional dependence, and 
ask ourselves, for example, how many kinds 
of functional dependence there may be, we 
immediately perceive that there is one kind 
at least that does not exclude a life here- 
after at all. The fatal conclusion of the 
physiologist flows from his assuming off- 
hand another kind of functional depend- 
ence, and treating it as the only imagina- 
ble kind. 3 

When the physiologist who thinks that 
his science cuts off all hope of immortality 
pronounces the phrase, " Thought is a 
function of the brain/' he thinks of the 
matter just as he thinks when he says, 



Human Immortality 13 

"Steam is a function of the tea-kettle," 
" Light is a function of the electric cir- 
cuit," " Power is a function of the moving 
waterfall. ,, In these latter cases the sev- 
eral material objects have the function of 
inwardly creating or engendering their 
effects, and their function must be called 
productive function. Just so, he thinks, it 
must be with the brain. Engendering con- 
sciousness in its interior, much as it engen- 
ders cholesterin and creatin and carbonic 
acid, its relation to our soul's life must also 
be called productive function. Of course, 
if such production be the function, then 
when the organ perishes, since the produc- 
tion can no longer continue, the soul must 
surely die. Such a conclusion as this is 
indeed inevitable from that particular con- 
ception of the facts. 4 

But in the world of physical nature pro- 
ductive function of this sort is not the 
only kind of function with which we are 
familiar. We have also releasing or per- 
missive function ; and we have transmis- 
sive function. 



14 Human Immortality 

The trigger of a crossbow has a releas- 
ing function : it removes the obstacle that 
holds the string, and lets the bow fly back 
to its natural shape. So when the hammer 
falls upon a detonating compound. By 
knocking out the inner molecular obstruc- 
tions, it lets the constituent gases resume 
their normal bulk, and so permits the ex- 
plosion to take place. 

In the case of a colored glass, a prism, 
or a refracting lens, we have transmissive 
function. The energy of light, no mat- 
ter how produced, is by the glass sifted 
and limited in color, and by the lens or 
prism determined to a certain path and 
shape. Similarly, the keys of an organ 
have only a transmissive function. They 
open successively the various pipes and let 
the wind in the air-chest escape in various 
ways. The voices of the various pipes are 
constituted by the columns of air trembling 
as they emerge. But the air is not engen- 
dered in the organ. The organ proper, as 
distinguished from its air-chest, is only an 



Human Immortality 15 

apparatus for letting portions of it loose 
upon the world in these peculiarly limited 
shapes. 

My thesis now is this : that, when we 
think of the law that thought is a function 
of the brain, we are not required to think 
of productive function only ; we are entitled 
also to consider permissive or transmissive 
function. And this the ordinary psycho- 
physiologist leaves out of his account. 

Suppose, for example, that the whole uni- 
verse of material things — the furniture of 
earth and choir of heaven — should turn 
out to be a mere surface-veil of pheno- 
mena, hiding and keeping back the world 
of genuine realities. Such a supposition is 
foreign neither to common sense nor to 
philosophy. Common sense believes in 
realities behind the veil even too supersti- 
tiously ; and idealistic philosophy declares 
the whole world of natural experience, as 
we get it, to be but a time-mask, shatter- 
ing or refracting the one infinite Thought 
which is the sole reality into those millions 



1 6 Human Immortality 

of finite streams of consciousness known to 
us as our private selves. 

" Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity." 

Suppose, now, that this were really so, 
and suppose, moreover, that the dome, 
opaque enough at all times to the full su- 
per-solar blaze, could at certain times and 
places grow less so, and let certain beams 
pierce through into this sublunary world. 
These beams would be so many finite rays, 
so to speak, of consciousness, and they would 
vary in quantity and quality as the opacity 
varied in degree. Only at particular times 
and places would it seem that, as a matter 
of fact, the veil of nature can grow thin and 
rupturable enough for such effects to occur. 
But in those places gleams, however finite 
and unsatisfying, of the absolute life of the 
universe, are from time to time vouchsafed. 
Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, and 
streams of knowledge and perception float 
into our finite world. 

Admit now that our brains are such thin 



Human Immortality 17 

and half - transparent places in the veil. 
What will happen ? Why, as the white 
radiance comes through the dome, with all 
sorts of staining and distortion imprinted 
on it by the glass, or as the air now comes 
through my glottis determined and limited 
in its force and quality of its vibrations 
by the peculiarities of those vocal chords 
which form its gate of egress and shape it 
into my personal voice, even so the genuine 
matter of reality, the life of souls as it is 
in its fullness, will break through our sev- 
eral brains into this world in all sorts of 
restricted forms, and with all the imperfec- 
tions and queernesses that characterize our 
finite individualities here below. 

According to the state in which the 
brain finds itself, the barrier of its obstruc- 
tiveness may also be supposed to rise or 
fall. It sinks so low, when the brain is in 
full activity, that a comparative flood of 
spiritual energy pours over. At other times, 
only such occasional waves of thought as 
heavy sleep permits get by. And when 



1 8 Human Immortality 

I finally a brain stops acting altogether, or 
decays, that special stream of conscious- 
ness which it subserved will vanish entirely 
from this natural world. But the sphere 
of being that supplied the consciousness 
would still be intact ; and in that more real 
world with which, even whilst here, it was 
continuous, the consciousness might, in 
ways unknown to us, continue still. 

You see that, on all these suppositions, 
our soul's life, as we here know it, would 
none the less in literal strictness be the 
function of the brain. The brain would 
be the independent variable, the mind 
would vary dependency on it. But such 
dependence on the brain for this natural 
life would in no wise make immortal life 
impossible, — it might be quite compatible 
with supernatural life behind the veil here- 
after. 

As I said, then, the fatal consequence is 
not coercive, the conclusion which mate- 
rialism draws being due solely to its one- 
sided way of taking the word 'function.' 



Human Immortality ig 

And, whether we care or not for immortal- 
ity in itself, we ought, as mere critics doing 
police duty among the vagaries of man- 
kind, to insist on the illogicality of a denial 
based on the flat ignoring of a palpable 
alternative. How much more ought we to 
insist, as lovers of truth, when the denial 
is that of such a vital hope of mankind ! 

In strict logic, then, the fangs of cere- 
bralistic materialism are drawn. My words 
ought consequently already to exert a re- 
leasing function on your hopes. You may 
believe henceforward, whether you care to 
profit by the permission or not. But, as 
this is a very abstract argument, I think it 
will help its effect to say a word or two 
about the more concrete conditions of the 
case. 

All abstract hypotheses sound unreal; 
and the abstract notion that our brains are 
colored lenses in the wall of nature, admit- 
ting light from the super-solar source, but 
at the same time tingeing and restricting 
it, has a thoroughly fantastic sound. What 



20 Human Immortality 

is it, you may ask, but a foolish metaphor ? 
And how can such a function be ima- 
gined ? Is n't the common materialistic 
notion vastly simpler ? Is not conscious- 
ness really more comparable to a sort of 
steam, or perfume, or electricity, or nerve- 
glow, generated on the spot in its own 
peculiar vessel ? Is it not more rigorously 
scientific to treat the brain's function as 
function of production ? 

The immediate reply is, that, if we are 
talking of science positively understood, 
function can mean nothing more than bare 
concomitant variation. When the brain- 
activities change in one way, conscious- 
ness changes in another; when the cur- 
rents pour through the occipital lobes, 
consciousness sees things ; when through 
the lower frontal region, consciousness 
says things to itself ; when they stop, she 
goes to sleep, etc. In strict science, we 
can only write down the bare fact of con- 
comitance ; and all talk about either pro- 
duction or transmission, as the mode of 



Human Immortality 21 

taking place, is pure superadded hypothe- 
sis, and metaphysical hypothesis at that, 
for we can frame no more notion of the 
details on the one alternative than on 
the other. Ask for any indication of the 
exact process either of transmission or 
of production, and Science confesses her 
imagination to be bankrupt. She has, so 
far, not the least glimmer of a conjecture 
or suggestion, — not even a bad verbal 
metaphor or pun to offer. Ignoramus, 
ignorabimus, is what most physiologists, in 
the words of one of their number, will say 
here. The production of such a thing as 
consciousness in the brain, they will reply 
with the late Berlin professor of physio- 
logy, is the absolute world-enigma, — some- 
thing so paradoxical and abnormal as to be 
a stumbling block to Nature, and almost a 
self-contradiction. Into the mode of pro- 
duction of steam in a tea-kettle we have 
conjectural insight, for the terms that 
change are physically homogeneous one 
with another, and we can easily imagine 



22 Human Immortality 

the case to consist of nothing but altera- 
tions of molecular motion. But in the 
production of consciousness by the brain, 
the terms are heterogeneous natures alto- 
gether; and as far as our understanding 
goes, it is as great a miracle as if we said, 
Thought is ' spontaneously generated/ or 
' created out of nothing.' 

The theory of production is therefore 
not a jot more simple or credible in itself 
than any other conceivable theory. It is 
only a little more popular. All that one 
need do, therefore, if the ordinary materi- 
alist should challenge one to explain how 
the brain can be an organ for limiting and 
determining to a certain form a conscious- 
ness elsewhere produced, is to retort with 
a tu quoque, asking him in turn to ex- 
plain how it can be an organ for producing 
consciousness out of whole cloth. For 
polemic purposes, the two theories are thus 
exactly on a par. 

But if we consider the theory of trans- 
mission in a wider way, we see that it has 



Human Immortality 23 

certain positive superiorities, quite apart 
from its connection with the immortality 
question. 

Just how the process of transmission 
may be carried on, is indeed unimagina- 
ble ; but the outer relations, so to speak, 
of the process, encourage our belief. Con- 
sciousness in this process does not have 
to be generated de novo in a vast number 
of places. It exists already, behind thej 
scenes, coeval with the world. The trans- 
mission-theory not only avoids in this way 
multiplying miracles, but it puts itself in 
touch with general idealistic philosophy 
better than the production-theory does. 
It should always be reckoned a good thing 
when science and philosophy thus meet. 5 

It puts itself also in touch with the con- 
ception of a ' threshold/ — a word with 
which, since Fechner wrote his book called 
' Esychophysik/ the so-called ' new Psycho- 
logy 9 has rung. Fechner imagines as the 
condition of consciousness a certain kind 
of psycho-physical movement, as he terms 



24 Human Immortality 

it. Before consciousness can come, a cer- 
tain degree of activity in the movement 
must be reached. This requisite degree 
is called the ' threshold ; ' but the height 
of the threshold varies under different cir- 
cumstances : it may rise or fall. When it 
falls, as in states of great lucidity, we 
grow conscious of things of which we 
should be unconscious at other times ; 
when it rises, as in drowsiness, conscious- 
ness sinks in amount. This rising and 
lowering of a psycho - physical threshold 
exactly conforms to our notion of a per- 
manent obstruction to the transmission 
of consciousness, which obstruction may, 
in our brains, grow alternately greater or 
less. 6 

The transmission-theory also puts itself 
in touch with a whole class of experi- 
ences that are with difficulty explained by 
the production-theory. I refer to those ob- 
scure and exceptional phenomena reported 
at all times throughout human history, 
which the ' psychical - researchers/ with 



Human Immortality 25 

Mr. Frederic Myers at their head, are do- 
ing so much to rehabilitate; 7 such phe- 
nomena, namely, as religious conversions, 
providential leadings in answer to prayer, 
instantaneous healings, premonitions, ap- 
paritions at time of death, clairvoyant vi- 
sions or impressions, and the whole range 
of mediumistic capacities, to say nothing 
of still more exceptional and incomprehen- 
sible things. If all our human thought be 
a function of the brain, then of course, if 
any of these things are facts, — and to my 
own mind some of them are facts, — we may 
not suppose that they can occur without 
preliminary brain-action. But the ordinary 
production-theory of consciousness is knit 
up with a peculiar notion of how brain- 
action can occur, — that notion being that 
all brain-action, without exception, is due to 
a prior action, immediate or remote, of the 
bodily sense-organs on the brain. Such 
action makes the brain produce sensations 
and mental images, and out of the sensations 
and images the higher forms of thought and 



26 Human Immortality 

knowledge in their turn are framed. As 
transmissionists, we also must admit this to 
be the condition of all our usual thought. 
Sense-action is what lowers the brain-bar- 
rier. My voice and aspect, for instance, 
strike upon your ears and eyes ; your brain 
thereupon becomes more pervious, and 
an awareness on your part of what I say 
and who I am slips into this world from the 
world behind the veil. But, in the mys- 
terious phenomena to which I allude, it is 
often hard to see where the sense-organs 
can come in. A medium, for example, will 
show knowledge of his sitter's private af- 
fairs which it seems impossible he should 
have acquired through sight or hearing, or 
inference therefrom. Or you will have an 
apparition of some one who is now dying 
hundreds of miles away. On the produc- 
tion - theory one does not see from what 
sensations such odd bits of knowledge are 
produced. On the transmission - theory, 
they don't have to be 'produced/ — they 
exist ready-made in the transcendental 



Human Immortality 27 

world, and all that is needed is an abnor- 
mal lowering of the brain-threshold to let 
them through. In cases of conversion, in 
providential leadings, sudden mental heal- 
ings, etc., it seems to the subjects them- 
selves of the experience as if a power 
from without, quite different from the ordi- 
nary action of the senses or of the sense- 
led mind, came into their life, as if the 
latter suddenly opened into that greater 
life in which it has its source. The word 
' influx/ used in Swedenborgian circles, well 
describes this impression of new insight, 
or new willingness, sweeping over us like 
a tide. All such experiences, quite para- 
doxical and meaningless on the production- 
theory, fall very naturally into place on 
the other theory. We need only suppose] 
the continuity of our consciousness with a 
mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves 
occasionally pouring over the dam. Of 
course the causes of these odd lowerings 
of the brain's threshold still remain a mys- 
tery on any terms. 



28 Human Immortality 

Add, then, this advantage to the trans- 
mission-theory, — an advantage which I am 
well aware that some of you will not rate 
very high, — and also add the advantage of 
not conflicting with a life hereafter, and I 
hope you will agree with me that it has 
many points of superiority to the more 
familiar theory. It is a theory which, in 
the history of opinion on such matters, 
has never been wholly left out of account, 
though never developed at any great length. 
In the great orthodox philosophic tradition, 
the body is treated as an essential condition 
to the soul's life in this world of sense ; but 
after death, it is said, the soul is set free, 
and becomes a purely intellectual and non- 
appetitive being. Kant expresses this idea 
in terms that come singularly close to those 
of our transmission-theory. The death of 
the body, he says, may indeed be the end 
of the sensational use of our mind, but only 
the beginning of the intellectual use. " The 
body," he continues, " would thus be, not 
the cause of our thinking, but merely a 



Human Immortality 29 

condition restrictive thereof, and, although 
essential to our sensuous and animal con- 
sciousness, it may be regarded as an im- 
peder of our pure spiritual life. 8 And in 
a recent book of great suggestiveness and 
power, less well-known as yet than it de- 
serves, — I mean ' Riddles of the Sphinx/ 
by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford, late 
of Cornell University, — the transmission- j 
theory is defended at some length. 9 

But still, you will ask, in what positive 
way does this theory help us to realize our 
immortality in imagination ? What we all 
wish to keep is just these individual restric- 
tions, these selfsame tendencies and pecu- 
liarities that define us to ourselves and oth- 
ers, and constitute our identity, so called. 
Our finitenesses and limitations seem to be 
our personal essence ; and when the finiting 
organ drops away, and our several spirits 
revert to their original source and resume 
their unrestricted condition, will they then 
be anything like those sweet streams of 
feeling which we know, and which even now 



So Human Immortality 

our brains are sifting out from the great 
reservoir for our enjoyment here below? 
Such questions are truly living questions, 
and surely they must be seriously discussed 
by future lecturers upon this Ingersoll 
foundation. I hope, for my part, that more 
than one such lecturer will penetratingly 
discuss the conditions of our immortal- 
ity, and tell us how much we may lose, 
and how much we may possibly gain, if 
its finiting outlines should be changed? 
If all determination is negation, as the phi- 
losophers say, it might well prove that the 
loss of some of the particular determina- 
tions which the brain imposes would not 
appear a matter for such absolute regret. 

But into these higher and more tran- 
scendental matters I refuse to enter upon 
this occasion ; and I proceed, during the 
remainder of the hour, to treat of my sec- 
ond point. Fragmentary and negative it 
is, as my first one has been. Yet, between 
them, they do give to our belief in immor- 
tality a freer wing. 



Human Immortality 31 

My second point is relative to the in- 
credible and intolerable number of beings 
which, with our modern imagination, we 
must believe to be immortal, if immortal- 
ity be true. I cannot but suspect that 
this, too, is a stumbling-block to many of 
my present audience. And it is a stum- 
bling-block which I should thoroughly like 
to clear away. 

It is, I fancy, a stumbling-block of alto- 
gether modern origin, due to the strain 
upon the quantitative imagination which 
recent scientific theories, and the moral 
feelings consequent upon them, have 
brought in their train. 

For our ancestors the world was a small, 
and — compared with our modern sense 
of it — a comparatively snug affair. Six 
thousand years at most it had lasted. In 
its history a few particular human he- 
roes, kings, ecclesiarchs, and saints stood 
forth very prominent, overshadowing the 
imagination with their claims and merits, 
so that not only they, but all who were 



j?2 Human Immortality 

associated familiarly with them, shone with 
a glamour which even the Almighty, it 
was supposed, must recognize and respect. 
pThese prominent personages and their as- 
sociates were the nucleus of the immortal 
group ; the minor heroes and saints of 
minor sects came next, and people with- 
out distinction formed a sort of background 
and filling in. The whole scene of eter- 
nity (so far, at least, as Heaven and not 
the nether place was concerned in it) 
never struck to the believer's fancy as an 
overwhelmingly large or inconveniently 
crowded stage. One might call this an 
aristocratic view of immortality ; the im- 
mortals — I speak of Heaven exclusively, 
for an immortality of torment need not 
now concern us — were always an elite, a 
^select and manageable number. 

But, with our own generation, an entirely 
new quantitative imagination has swept 
over our western world. The theory of 
evolution now requires us to suppose a far 
vaster scale of times, spaces, and numbers 



Human Immortality 33 

than our forefathers ever dreamed the cos- 
mic process to involve. Human history 
grows continuously out of animal history, 
and goes back possibly even to the tertiary 
epoch. From this there has emerged in- 
sensibly a democratic view, instead of the 
old aristocratic view, of immortality. For 
our minds, though in one sense they may 
have grown a little cynical, in another they 
have been made sympathetic by the evolu- 
tionary perspective. Bone of our bone and 
flesh of our flesh are these half -brutish pre- 
historic brothers. Girdled about with the 
immense darkness of this mysterious uni- 
verse even as we are, they were born and 
died, suffered and struggled. Given over 
to fearful crime and passion, plunged in the 
blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hide- 
ous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastly 
serving the profoundest of ideals in their 
fixed faith that existence in any form is 
better than non-existence, they ever res- 
cued trimphantly from the jaws of ever-im- 
minent destruction the torch of life, which, 



34 Human Immortality 

thanks to them, now lights the world 
for us. How small indeed seem individ- 
ual distinctions when we look back on 
these overwhelming numbers of human 
beings panting and straining under the 
pressure of that vital want ! And how 
inessential in the eyes of God must be 
the small surplus of the individual's merit, 
swamped as it is in the vast ocean of the 
common merit of mankind, dumbly and 
undauntedly doing the fundamental duty 
and living the heroic life ! We grow hum- 
ble and reverent as we contemplate the 
prodigious spectacle. Not our differences 
and distinctions, — we feel — no, but our 
common animal essence of patience under 
suffering and enduring effort must be what 
redeems us in the Deity's sight. An im- 
mense compassion and kinship fill the 
heart. An immortality from which these 
inconceivable billions of fellow - strivers 
should be excluded becomes an irrational 
idea for us. That our superiority in per- 
sonal refinement or in religious creed 



Human Immortality 35 

should constitute a difference between our- 
selves and our messmates at life's banquet, 
fit to entail such a consequential difference 
of destiny as eternal life for us, and for 
them torment hereafter, or death with the 
beasts that perish, is a notion too absurd | 
to be considered serious. Nay, more, the 
very beasts themselves — the wild ones 
at any rate — are leading the heroic life 
at all times. And a modern mind, ex-j 
panded as some minds are by cosmic emo-! 
tion, by the great evolutionist vision of 
universal continuity, hesitates to draw the 
line even at man. If any creature lives 
forever, why not all ? — why not the pa- 
tient brutes ? So that a faith in immortal- 
ity, if we are to indulge it, demands of us 
nowadays a scale of representation so stu- 
pendous that our imagination faints before 
it, and our personal feelings refuse to rise 
up and face the task. The supposition we 
are swept along to is too vast, and, rather 
than face the conclusion, we abandon the 
premise from which it starts. We give up 



36 Human Immortality 

our own immortality sooner than believe 
that all the hosts of Hottentots and Aus- 
tralians that have been, and shall ever be, 
should share it with us in secula seculorum. 
Life is a good thing on a reasonably copi- 
ous scale ; but the very heavens themselves, 
and the cosmic times and spaces, would 
stand aghast, we think, at the notion of 
preserving eternally such an ever-swelling 
plethora and glut of it. 

Having myself, as a recipient of modern 
scientific culture, gone through a subjec- 
tive experience like this, I feel sure that 
it must also have been the experience of 
many, perhaps of most, of you who listen 
to my words. But I have also come to see 
that it harbors a tremendous fallacy ; and, 
since the noting of the fallacy has set my 
own mind free again, I have felt that one 
service I might render to my listeners to- 
night would be to point out where it lies. 

It is the most obvious fallacy in the 
world, and the only wonder is that all the 
world should not see through it. It is the 



Human Immortality 37 

result of nothing but an invincible blind- 
ness from which we suffer, an insensibility 
■ to the inner significance of alien lives, and 
a conceit that would project our own inca- 
pacity into the vast cosmos, and measure 
the wants of the Absolute by our own 
puny needs. Our christian ancestors dealt 
with the problem more easily than we do. 
We, indeed, lack sympathy ; but they had 
a positive antipathy for these alien human 
creatures, and they nai'vely supposed the 
Deity to have the antipathy, too. Being, 
as they were, 'heathen/ our forefathers 
felt a certain sort of joy in thinking that 
their Creator made them as so much mere 
fuel for the fires of hell. Our culture 
has humanized us beyond that point, but 
we cannot yet conceive them as our com- 
rades in the fields of heaven. We have, as 
the phrase goes, no use for them, and it 
oppresses us to think of their survival. 
Take, for instance, all the Chinamen.""! 
Which of you here, my friends, sees any 
fitness in their eternal perpetuation unre- 



38 Human Immortality 

duced in numbers ? Surely not one of you. 
At most, you might deem it well to keep a 
few chosen specimens alive to represent an 
interesting and peculiar variety of human- 
ity ; but as for the rest, what comes in such 
surpassing numbers, and what you can 
only imagine in this abstract summary 
collective manner, must be something of 
which the units, you are sure, can have no 
individual preciousness. God himself, you 

- think, can have no use for them. An im- 
mortality of every separate specimen must 
be to him and to the universe as indiges- 
tible a load to carry as it is to you. So, 
engulfing the whole subject in a sort of 
mental giddiness and nausea, you drift 
along, first doubting that the mass can be 
immortal, then losing all assurance in the 
immortality of your own particular person, 
precious as you all the while feel and real- 

\_ize the latter to be. This, I am sure, is 
the attitude of mind of some of you before 
me. 

But is not such an attitude due to the 



Human Immortality 59 

veriest lack and dearth of your imagina- 
tion ? You take these swarms of alien 
kinsmen as they are for you: an external 
picture painted on your retina, represent- 
ing a crowd oppressive by its vastness and 
confusion. As they are for you, so you 
think they positively and absolutely are. / 
feel no call for them, you say ; therefore 
there is no call for them. But all the 
while, beyond this externality which is 
your way of realizing them, they realize 
themselves with the acutest internality, 
with the most violent thrills of life. 'Tis 
you who are dead, stone-dead and blind 
and senseless, in your way of looking on. 
You open your eyes upon a scene of which 
you miss the whole significance. Each of 
these grotesque or even repulsive aliens is 
animated by an inner joy of living as hot 
or hotter than that which you feel beating 
in your private breast. The sun rises and 
beauty beams to light his path. To miss 
the inner joy of him, as Stevenson says, is 
to miss the whole of him. 10 Not a being 



40 Human Immortality 

of the countless throng is there whose con- 
tinued life is not called for, and called for 
intensely, by the consciousness that ani- 
mates the being's form. That you neither 
realize nor understand nor call for it, that 
you have no use for it, is an absolutely 
irrelevant circumstance. That you have 
a saturation-point of interest tells us no* 
thing of the interests that absolutely are. 
I The Universe, with every living entity 
which her resources create, creates at the 
same time a call for that entity, and an 
appetite for its continuance, — creates it, 
if nowhere else, at least within the heart of 
the entity itself. It is absurd to suppose, 
simply because our private power of sym- 
pathetic vibration with other lives gives 
out so soon, that in the heart of infinite 
being itself there can be such a thing as 
plethora, or glut, or supersaturation. It 
is not as if there were a bounded room 
where the minds in possession had to 
move up or make place and crowd together 
to accommodate new occupants. Each new 



Human Immortality 41 

mind brings its own edition of the universe 
of space along with it, its own room to in- 
habit ; and these spaces never crowd each 
other, — the space of my imagination, for 
example, in no way interferes with yours. 
The amount of possible consciousness 
seems to be governed by no law analogous 
to that of the so-called conservation of en- 
ergy in the material world. When one 
man wakes up, or one is born, another does 
not have to go to sleep, or die, in order to 
keep the consciousness of the universe a 
^constant quantity. Professor Wundt, in 
fact, in his 'System of Philosophy/ has 
formulated a law of the universe which he 
calls the law of increase of spiritual en- 
ergy, and which he expressly opposes to 
the law of conservation of energy in physi- W 
cal things. 11 There seems no formal limit 
to the positive increase of being in spir- 
itual respects ; and since spiritual being, 
whenever it comes, affirms itself, expands 
and craves continuance, we may justly and 
literally say, regardless of the defects of 



42 Human Immortality 

our own private sympathy, that the supply 
of individual life in the universe can never 
possibly, however immeasurable it may 
become, exceed the demand. The de- 
mand for that supply is there the moment 
the supply itself comes into being, for the 
beings supplied demand their own con- 
tinuance. 

I speak, you see, from the point of view 
of all the other individual beings, real- 
izing and enjoying inwardly their own ex- 
istence. If we are pantheists, we can 
stop there. We need, then, only say that 
through them, as through so many diver- 
sified channels of expression, the eternal * 
Spirit of the Universe affirms and realizes 
its own infinite life. But if we are theists, 
we can go farther without altering the 
result. God, we can then say, has so in- 
exhaustible a capacity for love that his call 
and need is for a literally endless accu- 
mulation of created lives. He can never 
faint or grow weary, as we should, under 
the increasing supply. His scale is infinite 



Human Immortality 43 

in all things. His sympathy can never 
know satiety or glut. 

I hope now that you agree with me 
that the tiresomeness of an over - peopled 
Heaven is a purely subjective and illusory 
notion, a sign of human incapacity, a rem- 
nant of the old narrow-hearted aristocratic j 
creed. " Revere the Maker, lift thine eye 
up to his style and manners of the sky," 
and you will believe that this is indeed a 
democratic universe, in which your paltry 
exclusions play no regulative part. Was 
your taste consulted in the peopling of this 
globe ? How, then, should it be consulted 
as to the peopling of the vast City of God ? 
Let us put our hand over our mouth, like 
Job, and be thankful that in our personal 
littleness we ourselves are here at all. 
The Deity that suffers us, we may be sure, 
can suffer many another queer and won- 
drous and only half-delightful thing. 

For my own part, then, so far as logic 
goes, I am willing that every leaf that ever 
grew in this world's forests and rustled in 



44 Human Immortality 

the breeze should become immortal. It is 
purely a question of fact : are the leaves 
so, or not ? Abstract quantity, and the ab- 
stract needlessness in our eyes of so much 
reduplication of things so much alike, have 

^no connection with the subject. For big- 
ness and number and generic similarity 
are only manners of our finite way of think- 
ing ; and, considered in itself and apart 
from our imagination, one scale of dimen- 
sions and of numbers for the Universe is 
no more miraculous or inconceivable than 
another, the moment you grant to a uni- 
verse the liberty to be at all, in place of the 
Non-entity that might conceivably have 

I reigned. 

The heart of being can have no exclu- 
sions akin to those which our poor little 
hearts set up. The inner significance of 
other lives exceeds all our powers of sym- 
pathy and insight. If we feel a signifi- 
cance in our own life which would lead us 
spontaneously to claim its perpetuity, let 
us be at least tolerant of like claims made 



Human Immortality 45 

by other lives, however numerous, however 
unideal they may seem to us to be. Let 
us at any rate not decide adversely on our 
own claim, whose grounds we feel directly, 
because we cannot decide favorably on the 
alien claims, whose grounds we cannot feel 
at all. That would be letting blindness 
lay down the law to sight. 



NOTES 



Note i, page 9. 
The gaps between the centres first recognized as 
motor and sensory — gaps which form in man two 
thirds of the surface of the hemispheres — are thus 
positively interpreted by Flechsig as intellectual 
centres strictly so called. [Compare his Gehirn 
und Seele, 2te Ausgabe, 1896, p. 23.] They have, 
he considers, a common type of microscopic struc- 
ture; and the fibres connected with them are a 
month later in gaining their medullary sheath than 
are the fibres connected with the other centres. 
When disordered, they are the starting-point of the 
insanities, properly so called. Already Wernicke 
had defined insanity as disease of the organ of asso- 
ciation, without so definitely pretending to circum- 
scribe the latter — compare his Grundriss der Psy- 
chiatrte, 1894.jp. 7. Flechsig goes so far as to say 
that he finds a difference of symptoms in general par- 
alytics according as their frontal or their more poste- 
rior association-centres are diseased. Where it is 



48 Notes 

the frontal centres, the patient's consciousness of self 
is more deranged than is his perception of purely- 
objective relations. Where the posterior associa- 
tive regions suffer, it is rather the patient's system 
of objective ideas that undergoes disintegration 
(Joe. tit. pp. 89-91). In rodents Flechsig thinks 
there is a complete absence of association-centres, 
— the sensory centres touch each other. In car- 
nivora and the lower monkeys the latter centres 
still exceed the association - centres in volume. 
Only in the katarhinal apes do we begin to find 
anything like the human type (p. 84). 

In his little pamphlet, Die Grenzen geis tiger 
Gesundheit und Krankheit, Leipzig, 1896, Flech- 
sig ascribes the moral insensibility which is found 
in certain criminals to a diminution of internal 
pain-feeling due to degeneration of the 'Korper- 
fuhlsphare,' that extensive anterior region first 
so named by Munk, in which he lays the seat of 
all the emotions and of the consciousness of self 
\Gehirn und Seele, pp. 62-68 ; die Grenzen, etc., 
pp. 31-39, 48]. — I give these references to Flechsig 
for concreteness' sake, not because his views are 
irreversibly made out. 

Note 2, page n. 

So widespread is this conclusion in positivistic 
circles, so abundantly is it expressed in conversa- 



Notes 49 

tion, and so frequently implied in things that are 
written, that I confess that my surprise was great 
when I came to look into books for a passage 
explicitly denying immortality on physiological 
grounds, which I might quote to make my text 
more concrete. I was unable to find anything 
blunt and distinct enough to serve. I looked 
through all the books that would naturally suggest 
themselves, with no effect ; and I vainly asked vari- 
ous psychological colleagues. And yet I should al- 
most have been ready to take oath that I had read 
several such passages of the most categoric sort 
within the last decade. Very likely this is a false 
impression, and it may be with this opinion as with 
many others. The atmosphere is full of them ; 
many a writer's pages logically presuppose and 
involve them ; yet, if you wish to refer a student 
to an express and radical statement that he may 
employ as a text to comment on, you find almost 
nothing that will do. In the present case there 
are plenty of passages in which, in a general way, 
mind is said to be conterminous with brain-func- 
tion, but hardly one in which the author thereupon 
explicitly denies the possibility of immortality. 
The best one I have found is perhaps this : " Not 
only consciousness, but every stirring of life, de- 
pends on functions that go out like a flame when 
nourishment is cut off. . . . The phenomena of 



50 Notes 

consciousness correspond, element for element, to 
the operations of special parts of the brain. . . . 
The destruction of any piece of the apparatus in- 
volves the loss of some one or other of the vital 
operations ; and the consequence is that, as far as 
life extends, we have before us only an organic 
function, not a Ding-an-sich, or an expression of 
that imaginary entity the Soul. This fundamental 
proposition . . . carries with it the denial of the 
immortality of the soul, since, where no soul exists, 
its mortality or immortality cannot be raised as 
a question. . . . The function fills its time, — the 
flame illuminates and therein gives out its whole 
being. That is all ; and verily that is enough. . . . 
Sensation has its definite organic conditions, and, 
as these decay with the natural decay of life, it is 
quite impossible for a mind accustomed to deal 
with realities to suppose any capacity of sensation 
as surviving when the machinery of our natural 
existence has stopped." \_E. Duhring : der Werth 
des Lebensy 3d edition, pp. 48, 168.] 

Note 3, page 12. 

The philosophically instructed reader will notice 
that I have all along been placing myself at the 
ordinary dualistic point of view of natural science 
and of common sense. From this point of view 
mental facts like feelings are made of one kind of 



I 

i 

Notes 51 

stuff or substance, physical facts of another. An 
absolute phenomenism, not believing such a dual- 
ism to be ultimate, may possibly end by solving 
some of the problems that are insoluble when pro- 
pounded in dualistic terms. Meanwhile, since the 
physiological objection to immortality has arisen 
on the ordinary dualistic plane of thought, and 
since absolute phenomenism has as yet said nothing 
articulate enough to count about the matter, it is 
proper that my reply to the objection should be 
expressed in dualistic terms — leaving me free, of 
course, on any later occasion to make an attempt, 
if I wish, to transcend them and use different cate- 
gories. 

Now, on the dualistic assumption, one cannot see 
more than two really different sorts of dependence 
of our mind on our brain : Either 

(1) The brain brings into being the very stuff 
of consciousness of which our mind consists ; or 
else 4 

(2) Consciousness preexists as an entity, and the 
various brains give to it its various special forms. 

If supposition 2 be the true one, and the stuff of 
mind preexists, there are, again, only two ways of 
conceiving that our brain confers upon it the spe- 
cifically human form. It may exist 

(a) In disseminated particles ; and then our brains 
are organs of concentration, organs for combining 



52 Notes 

and massing these into resultant minds of personal 
form. Or it may exist 

(b) In vaster unities (absolute 6 world- soul/ or 
something less); and then our brains are organs 
for separating it into parts and giving them finite 
form. 

There are thus three possible theories of the 
brain's function, and no more. We may name 
them, severally, — 

i. The theory of production; 

2a. The theory of combination ; 

2b. The theory of separation. 

In the text of the lecture, theory number 2b (spe- 
cified more particularly as the transmission-theory) 
is defended against theory number i. Theory 2#, 
otherwise known as the mind-dust or mind-stuff 
theory, is left entirely unnoticed for lack of time. 
I also leave it uncriticised in these notes, having 
already considered it, as fully as the so-far pub- 
lished forms of it may seem to call for, in my 
work, The Principles of Psychology, New York, 
Holt & Co., 1892, chapter VI. I may say here, 
however, that Professor W. K. Clifford, one of the 
ablest champions of the combination-theory, and 
originator of the useful term ' mind-stuff,' considers 
that theory incompatible with individual immortal- 
ity, and in his review of Stewart's and T ait's book, 
The Unseen Universe, thus expresses his convic- 
tion : — 



Notes 55 

" The laws connecting consciousness with changes 
in the brain are very definite and precise, and their 
necessary consequences are not to be evaded. . . . 
Consciousness is a complex thing made up of ele- 
ments, a stream of feelings. The action of the 
brain is also a complex thing made up of elements, 
a stream of nerve-messages. For every feeling in 
consciousness there is at the same time a nerve- 
message in the brain. . . . Consciousness is not a 
simple thing, but a complex ; it is the combination 
of feelings into a stream. It exists at the same 
time with the combination of nerve-messages into 
a stream. If individual feeling always goes with 
individual nerve-message, if combination or stream 
of feelings always goes with stream of nerve-mes- 
sages, does it not follow that, when the stream of 
nerve-messages is broken up, the stream of feelings 
will be broken up also, will no longer form a con- 
sciousness ? Does it not follow that, when the mes- 
sages themselves are broken up, the individual feel- 
ings will be resolved into still simpler elements? 
The force of this evidence is not to be weakened 
by any number of spiritual bodies. Inexorable 
facts connect our consciousness with this body that 
we know ; and that not merely as a whole, but the 
parts of it are connected severally with parts of our 
brain-action. If there is any similar connection 
with a spiritual body, it only follows that the spirit- 



54 Notes 

ual body must die at the same time with the natu- 
ral one." [Lectures and Essays, vol. i. p. 247-49. 
Compare also passages of similar purport in vol. ii. 
pp. 65-70.] 

Note 4, page 13. 

The theory of production, or materialistic the- 
ory, seldom ventures to formulate itself very dis- 
tinctly. Perhaps the following passage from Ca- 
banis is as explicit as anything one can find : — 

" To acquire a just idea of the operations from 
which thought results, we must consider the brain 
as a particular organ specially destined to produce 
it ; just as the stomach and intestines are destined 
to operate digestion, the liver to filter bile, the pa- 
rotid and maxillary glands to prepare the salivary 
juices. The impressions, arriving in the brain, 
force it to enter into activity ; just as the alimen- 
tary materials, falling into the stomach, excite it to 
a more abundant secretion of gastric juice, and to 
the movements which result in their own solution. 
The function proper to the first organ is that of re- 
ceiving \_fiercevoir] each particular impression, of 
attaching signs to it, of combining the different im- 
pressions, of comparing them with each other, of 
drawing from them judgments and resolves ; just 
as the function of the other organ is to act upon 
the nutritive substances whose presence excites it, 



Notes 55 

to dissolve them, and to assimilate their juices to 
our nature. 

"Do you say that the organic movements by 
which the brain exercises these functions are un- 
known ? I reply that the action by which the 
nerves of the stomach determine the different oper- 
ations which constitute digestion, and the manner 
in which they confer so active a solvent power upon 
the gastric juice, are equally hidden from our scru- 
tiny. We see the food-materials fall into this vis- 
cus with their own proper qualities ; we see them 
emerge with new qualities, and we infer that the 
stomach is really the author of this alteration. 
Similarly we see the impressions reaching the brain 
by the intermediation of the nerves ; they then are 
isolated and without coherence. The viscus en- 
ters into action ; it acts upon them, and soon it 
emits \renvoie\ them metamorphosed into ideas, 
to which the language of physiognomy or gesture, 
or the signs of speech and writing, give an outward 
expression. We conclude, then, with an equal 
certitude, that the brain digests, as it were, the im- 
pressions ; that it performs organically the secre- 
tion of thought." {Rapports du Physique et du 
Moral, 8th edition, 1844, P- I 37-] 

It is to the ambiguity of the word ' impression * 
that such an account owes whatever plausibility it 
may seem to have. More recent forms of the pro- 



56 Notes 

duction-theory have shown a tendency to liken 
thought to a 1 force ; which the brain exerts, or to a 
6 state ' into which it passes. Herbert Spencer, for 
instance, writes : — 

" The law of metamorphosis, which holds among 
the physical forces, holds equally between them 
and the mental forces. . . . How this metamor- 
phosis takes place; how a force existing as mo- 
tion, heat, or light can become a mode of con- 
sciousness ; how it is possible for aerial vibrations 
to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the 
forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain 
to give rise to emotion, — these are mysteries 
which it is impossible to fathom. But they are 
not profounder mysteries than the transformations 
of the physical forces into each other." [First 
Principles, 2nd Edition, p. 217.] 

So Biichner says : u Thinking must be regarded 
as a special mode of general natural motion, which 
is as characteristic of the substance of the central 
nervous elements as the motion of contraction is 
of the nerve-substance, or the motion of light is of 
the universal-ether. . . . That thinking is and must 
be a mode of motion is not merely a postulate of 
logic, but a proposition which has of late been 
demonstrated experimentally. . . . Various ingen- 
ious experiments have proved that the swiftest 
thought that we are able to evolve occupies at least 



Notes 57 

the eighth or tenth part of a second." [Force and 
Matter^ New York, 1891, p. 241.] 

Heat and light, being modes of motion, 'phos- 
phorescence ' and ' incandescence ' are phenomena 
to which consciousness has been likened by the 
production-theory: "As one sees a metallic rod, 
placed in a glowing furnace, gradually heat itself, 
and — as the undulations of the caloric grow more 
and more frequent — pass successively from the 
shades of bright red to dark red (sic)) to white, 
and develope, as its temperature rises, heat and 
light, — so the living sensitive cells, in presence of 
the incitations that solicit them, exalt themselves 
progressively as to their most interior sensibility, 
enter into a phase of erethism, and at a certain 
number of vibrations, set free (degagent) pain as a 
physiological expression of this same sensibility 
superheated to a red-white." [J. Luys : le Cer- 
veau, p. 91.] 

In a similar vein Mr. Percival Lowell writes : 
" When we have, as we say, an idea, what happens 
inside of us is probably something like this : the 
neural current of molecular change passes up the 
nerves, and through the ganglia reaches at last 
the cortical cells. . . . When it reaches the cor- 
tical cells, it finds a set of molecules which are not 
so accustomed to this special change. The cur- 
rent encounters resistance, and in overcoming this 



5§ Notes 

resistance it causes the cells to glow. This white- 
heating of the cells we call consciousness. Con- 
sciousness, in short, is probably nerve-glow." [Oc- 
cult Japan, Boston, 1895, p. 311.] 

Note 5, page 23. 

The transmission - theory connects itself very 
naturally with that whole tendency of thought 
known as transcendentalism. Emerson, for exam- 
ple, writes : " We lie in the lap of immense intelli- 
gence, which makes us receivers of its truth and 
organs of its activity. When we discern justice, 
when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, 
but allow a passage to its beams." [Self-Reliance, 
p. 56.] But it is not necessary to identify the con- 
sciousness postulated in the lecture, as preexisting 
behind the scenes, with the Absolute Mind of tran- 
scendental Idealism, although, indeed, the notion of 
it might lead in that direction. The absolute Mind 
of transcendental Idealism is one integral Unit, one 
single World-mind. For the purposes of my lec- 
ture, however, there might be many minds behind 
the scenes as well as one. All that the transmis- 
sion-theory absolutely requires is that they should 
transcend our minds, — which thus come from 
something mental that pre-exists, and is larger 
than themselves. 



Notes 



59 



Note 6, page 24. 

Fechner's conception of a ( psycho - physical 
threshold ' as connected with his i wave-scheme ' 
is little known to English readers. I accordingly 
subjoin it, in his own words, abridged : — 

" The psychically one is connected with a physi- 
cally many ; the physically many contract psychi- 
cally into a one, a simple, or at least a more sim- 
ple. Otherwise expressed : the psychically unified 
and simple are resultants of physical multiplicity ; 
the physically manifold gives unified or simple re- 
sults. . . . 

"The facts which are grouped together under 
these expressions, and which give them their mean- 
ing, are as follows : . . . With our two hemispheres 
we think singly ; with the identical parts of our two 
retinae we see singly. . . . The simplest sensation 
of light or sound in us is connected with processes 
which, since they are started and kept up by outer 
oscillations, must themselves be somehow of an 
oscillatory nature, although we are wholly unaware 
of the separate phases and oscillations. . . . 

" It is certain, then, that some unified or sim- 
ple psychic resultants depend on physical multipli- 
city. But, on the other hand, it is equally certain 
that the multiplicities of the physical world do not 
always combine into a simple psychical resultant, 



6o 



Notes 



— no, not even when they are compounded in a 
single bodily system. Whether they may not nev- 
ertheless combine into a unified resultant is a 
matter for opinion, since one is always free to ask 
Whether the entire world, as such, may not have 
some unified psychic resultant. But of any such 
resultant we at least have no consciousness. . . . 

" For brevity's sake, let us distinguish psycho- 
physical continuity and discontinuity from each 
other. Continuity, let us say, takes place so far as 
a physical manifold gives a unified or simple psy- 
chic resultant ; discontinuity, so far as it gives a 
distinguishable multiplicity of such resultants. In- 
asmuch, however, as, within the unity of a more 
general consciousness or phenomenon of conscious- 
ness, there still maybe a multiplicity distinguished, 
the continuity of a more general consciousness 
does not exclude the discontinuity of particular 
phenomena, 

" One of the most important problems and tasks 
of Psycho-physics now is this : to determine the 
conditions (Gesichtspunkte) under which the cases 
of continuity and of discontinuity occur. 

" Whence comes it that different organisms have 
separate consciousnesses, although their bodies 
are just as much connected by general Nature 
as the parts of a single organism are with each 
other, and these latter give a single conscious re- 



Notes 



61 



sultant ? Of course we can say that the connec- 
tion is more intimate between the parts of an 
organism than between the organisms of Nature. 
But what do we mean by a more intimate connec- 
tion ? Can an absolute difference of result depend 
on anything so relative ? And does not Nature as 
a whole show as strict a connection as any organism 
does, — yea, one even more indissoluble ? And the 
same questions come up within each organism. 
How comes it that, with different nerve-fibres of 
touch and sight, we distinguish different space- 
points, but with one fibre distinguish nothing, 
although the different fibres are connected in the 
brain just as much as the parts are in the single 
fibre? We may again call the latter connection 
the more intimate^ but then the same sort of ques- 
tion will arise again. 

" Unquestionably the problem which here lies 
before Psycho - physics cannot be sharply an- 
swered ; but we may establish a general point of 
view for its treatment, consistently with what we 
laid down in a former chapter on the relations of 
more general with more particular phenomena of 
consciousness." 

[The earlier passage is here inserted :] " The 
essential principle is this: That human psycho- 
physical activity must exceed a certain intensity 
for any waking consciousness at all to occur, and 



62 



Notes 



that during the waking state any particular specify 
cation of the said activity (whether spontaneous or 
due to stimulation), which is capable of occasion- 
ing a particular specification of consciousness, must 
exceed in its turn a certain further degree of inten- 
sity for the consciousness actually to arise. . . . 

" This state of things (in itself a mere fact need- 
ing no picture) may be made clearer by an image 
or scheme, and also more concisely spoken of. 
Imagine the whole psycho-physical activity of man 
to be a wave, and the degree of this activity to be 
symbolized by the height of the wave above a hori- 
zontal basal line or surface, to which every psycho- 
physically active point contributes an ordinate. . . . 
The whole form and evolution of the conscious- 
ness will then depend on the rising and falling of 
this wave; the intensity of the consciousness at 
any time on the wave's height at that time; and 
the height must always somewhere exceed a certain 
limit, which we will call a threshold^ if waking con- 
sciousness is to exist at all. 

" Let us call this wave the total wave, and the 
threshold in question the principal threshold" 

[Since our various states of consciousness recur, 
some in long, some in short periods], "we may 
represent such a long period as that of the slowly 
fluctuating condition of our general wakefulness and 
the general direction of our attention as a wave 



Notes 63 

that slowly changes the place of its summit. If we 
call this the under-wave, then the movements of 
shorter period, on which the more special con- 
scious states depend, can be symbolized by wave- 
lets superposed upon the under-wave, and we can 
call these over-waves. They will cause all sorts of 
modifications of the under-wave's surface, and the 
total wave will be the resultant of both sets of 
waves. 

"The greater, now, the strength of the move- 
ments of short period, the amplitude of the oscil- 
lations of the psycho-physical activity, the higher 
will the crests of the wavelets that represent them 
rise above, and the lower will their valleys sink be- 
low the surface of the under-wave that bears them. 
And these heights and depressions must exceed a 
certain limit of quantity which we may call the 
upper threshold, before the special mental state 
which is correlated with them can appear in con- 
sciousness " [pp. 454-456]. 

" So far now as we symbolize any system of psy- 
cho-physical activity, to which a generally unified or 
principal consciousness corresponds, by the image 
of a total wave rising with its crest above a certain 
6 threshold/ we have a means of schematizing in a 
single diagram the physical solidarity of all these 
psycho-physical systems throughout Nature, to- 
gether with their pyscho - physical discontinuity. 



64 Notes 

For we need only draw all the waves so that they 
run into each other below the threshold, whilst 
above it they appear distinct, as in the figure be- 
low. 



a be 



A 




" In this figure b, c stand for three organisms, 
or rather for the total waves of psycho-physical ac- 
tivity of three organisms, whilst A B represents the 
threshold. In each wave the part that rises above 
the threshold is an integrated thing, and is con- 
nected with a single consciousness. Whatever lies 
below the threshold, being unconscious, separates 
the conscious crests, although it is still the means 
of physical connection. 

" In general terms : wherever a psycho-physical 
total wave is continuous with itself above the 
threshold, there we find the unity or identity of a 
consciousness, inasmuch as the connection of the 
psychical phenomena which correspond to the parts 
of the wave also appears in consciousness. When- 
ever, on the contrary, total waves are disconnected, 
or connected only underneath the threshold, the 
corresponding consciousness is broken, and no con- 
nection between its several parts appears. More 
briefly : consciousness is continuous or discontinu- 



Notes 65 

ous, unified or discrete, according as the psycho- 
physical total waves that subserve it are them- 
selves continuous or discontinuous above the 
threshold. . . . 

" If, in the diagram, we should raise the entire 
line of waves so that not only the crests but the 
valleys appeared above the threshold, then these 
latter would appear only as depressions in one 
great continuous wave above the threshold, and the 
discontinuity of the consciousness would be con- 
verted into continuity. We of course cannot bring 
this about. We might also squeeze the wave to- 
gether so that the valleys should be pressed up, 
and the crests above the threshold flow into a line ; 
then the discretely-feeling organisms would have 
become a singly - feeling organism. This, again, 
Man cannot voluntarily bring about, but it is 
brought about in Man's nature. His two halves, 
the right one and the left one, are thus united ; and 
the number of segments of radiates and articulates 
show that more than two parts can be thus psycho- 
physically conjoined. One need only cut them 
asunder, i. e. interpolate another part of nature 
between them under the threshold, and they break 
into two separately conscious beings." . . . \Ele- 
mente der Psychophysik, i860, vol. ii. pp. 526- 
530-] 

One sees easily how, on Fechner's wave-scheme, 



66 



Notes 



a world-soul may be expressed. All psycho-phy- 
sical activity being continuous 'below the thresh- 
old,' the consciousness might also become contin- 
uous if the threshold sank low enough to uncover 
all the waves. The threshold throughout nature 
in general is, however, very high, so the conscious- 
ness that gets over it is of the discontinuous form. 

Note 7, page 25. 

See the long series of articles by Mr. Myers in the 
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 
beginning in the third volume with automatic writ- 
ing, and ending in the latest volumes with the 
higher manifestations of knowledge by mediums. 
Mr. Myers's theory of the whole range of pheno- 
mena is, that our normal consciousness is in con- 
tinuous connection with a greater consciousness 
of which we do not know the extent, and to which 
he gives, in its relation to the particular person, 
the not very felicitous name — though no better one 
has been proposed — of his or her 6 subliminal ' self . 

Note 8, page 29. 

See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, second edition, 
p. 809. 

Note 9, page 29. 

I subjoin a few extracts from Mr. Schiller's 
work : " Matter is an admirably calculated machin- 



Notes 67 

ery for regulating, limiting, and restraining , the; 
consciousness which it encases. ... If the mate- 
rial encasement be coarse and simple, as in the 
lower organisms, it permits only a little intelligence 
to permeate through it ; if it is delicate and com- 
plex, it leaves more pores and exits, as it were, 
for the manifestations of consciousness. . . . On 
this analogy, then, we may say that the lower ani- 
mals are still entranced in the lower stage of brute 
lethargy^ while we have passed into the higher 
phase of somnambulism, which already permits us 
strange glimpses of a lucidity that divines the real- 
ities of a transcendent world. And this gives the 
final answer to Materialism : it consists in showing 
in detail . . . that Materialism is a hysteron prote- 
ron, a putting of the cart before the horse, which 
may be rectified by just inverting the connection 
between Matter and Consciousness. Matter is not 
that which produces Consciousness, but that which 
limits it, and confines its intensity within certain 
limits: material organization does not construct 
consciousness out of arrangements of atoms, but 
contracts its manifestation within the sphere which 
it permits. This explanation . . . admits the con- 
nection of Matter and Consciousness, but contends 
that the course of interpretation must proceed in 
the contrary direction. Thus it will fit the facts 
alleged in favor of Materialism equally well, be- 



68 Notes 

teic^ enabling us to understand facts which Mate- 
Wmsm rejected as ' supernatural.' It explains the 
lower by the higher, Matter by Spirit, instead of 
vice versa, and thereby attains to an explanation 
which is ultimately tenable, instead of one which 
is ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the 
possibility of which no evidence in favor of Mate- 
rialism can possibly affect. For if, e. g., a man 
loses consciousness as soon as his brain is injured, 
it is clearly as good an explanation to say the 
injury to the brain destroyed the mechanism by 
which the manifestation of the consciousness was 
rendered possible, as to say that it destroyed the 
seat of consciousness. On the other hand, there 
are facts which the former theory suits far better. 
If, e.g., as sometimes happens, the man, after a 
time, more or less, recovers the faculties of which 
the injury to his brain had deprived him, and that 
not in consequence of a renewal of the injured part, 
but in consequence of the inhibited functions being 
performed by the vicarious action of other parts, 
the easiest explanation certainly is that, after a 
time, consciousness constitutes the remaining parts 
into a mechanism capable of acting as a substitute 
for the lost parts. And again, if the body is a me- 
chanism for inhibiting consciousness, for prevent- 
ing the full powers of the Ego from being prema- 
turely actualized, it will be necessary to invert also 



Notes 69 

our ordinary ideas on the subject of memory, and 
to account for forgetfulness instead of for mem- 
ory. It will be during life that we drink the bitter 
cup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we are 
enabled to forget. And this will serve to explain 
not only the extraordinary memories of the drown- 
ing and the dying generally, but also the curious 
hints which experimental psychology occasionally 
affords us that nothing is ever forgotten wholly 
and beyond recall." \_Riddles of the Sphinx^ Lon- 
don, Swan Sonnenschein, 1891, p. 293 fL] 

Mr. Schiller's conception is much more com- 
plex in its relations than the simple 'theory of 
transmission ' postulated in my lecture, and to do 
justice to it the reader should consult the original 
work. 

Note 10, page 39. 

I beg the reader to peruse R. L. Stevenson's 
magnificent little essay entitled 'The Lantern 
Bearers,' reprinted in the collection entitled Across 
the Plains. The truth is that we are doomed, by 
the fact that we are practical beings with very 
limited tasks to attend to, and special ideals to 
look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible 
to the inner feelings, and to the whole inner sig- 
nificance of lives that are different from our own. 
Our opinion of the worth of such lives is abso- 



70 Notes 

iutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at 
all. 

Note ii, page 41. 

W. Wundt: System der Philosophies Leipzig, 
Engelmann, 1889, p. 315. 



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